Saturday, December 15, 2012

Protection and Shield

The
sign of the Cross is a confession of faith: I believe in him who suffered for
me and rose again; in him who has transformed the sign of shame into a sign of
hope and of the love of God that is present with us. The confession of faith is
a confession of hope: I believe in him who in his weakness is the Almighty; in
him who can and will save me even in apparent absence and impotence.

By
signing ourselves with the Cross, we place ourselves under the protection of
the Cross, hold it in front of us like a shield that will guard us in all the
distress of daily life and give us the courage to go on… The Cross shows us the
road of life—the imitation of Christ.

Spirit of the Liturgy, 177-8

Reflection – I write this realizing that many of my readers,
particularly in the States, have been saturated this past day with media
coverage of the tragic school shooting in Newtown CT, the brutal slaying of 22
children and six of their teachers by a disturbed young man. In MH we had
a silent day of recollection and prayer yesterday, and so only heard of this
terrible event at supper. We don’t really have TV here, and limited internet
access, and so are somewhat insulated from the incessant over-stimulation of
horrific images and morass of painful details that accompany this kind of
event; nonetheless we are all mindful of the grief and horror that many are
carrying today.

It is a sign of the
Cross kind of day. Time to confess our faith in this one who came to plunge
precisely into the world’s madness and horror. Time to confess our faith
precisely in the one who came to be a victim with the victims, who saved the
whole human race and renewed the cosmos precisely by embracing the helplessness
and seeming futility of a random violent death.

It is the sign of the
Cross we need to turn to, the Cross we need to cling to, the reality, the fact
of God’s love and presence penetrating to the very heart of darkness,
descending to the very bowels of hell, bringing into the worst of our humanity
the best of his divinity.

Coming right before
Christmas lends this tragedy in Connecticut a particular poignancy, a particular shade of
sadness. Some will say, understandably, that Christmas will simply not happen
in that town this year.

Of course it will not
be a ‘merry’ Christmas there, with parties and laughter and fun. But I do hope
Christmas happens there, nonetheless. It is for this that Jesus was born into
the world, that God became that little baby, that child, that helpless one. To
save all the children, the babies, the helpless ones, the victims, all those
who are run over, crushed, swept away by the tides of life and the evils of
man. He came to open a door to something else, to another way of living,
another place where such things cannot happen.

It is no accident that
the feast of the Holy Innocents comes right on the heels of Christmas. In every
century, every age, in every nation across the earth innocents have been
slaughtered by ruthless and twisted men. The blood of the innocents cries out
from the ends of the earth.

God came to save them,
and to save us who may not be quite so innocent, but who cry out, too. And he
saves them and us by becoming one of us, by entering into the passion of the
innocent, by enduring the same hatred and violence and horror they endure. And
this is our hope, and our saving grace.

So we pray for the
poor people convulsed with grief and terror in this little town in New England. We pray for the dead, for their eternal rest
and peace with God. We pray, yes, for this poor twisted young man who did this terrible
act, for God’s mercy upon him. And we pray for our world, that all of us may
turn to the Crucified One more deeply, more firmly, more absolutely, and allow
his love and his mercy flowing from the Cross to wash over us, to penetrate us,
to transform us, to become our own source of life and the pattern of our own
actions, thoughts, words, being. To imitate him, and so be his love in our
broken world.

1 comment:

Mercy is a tricky virtue. It is related to justice, but not the same thing. Justice is easier to understand because everyone gets his due. Injustice, is completely impossible to understand. Jesus comes and dismisses all that.

Jesus comes because we are sinners, undeserving. We are bound for heaven...up,up,up...as zach Sobeich so bravely, gently reminds us. We don't deserve the love that God extends to us in one another. It is a gift, from God to us. It is not something we deserve or can pay back ( that would be justice).

Mercy . Thanks for writing about this today. Suffering happens, shocks us... And we forget about God's mercy. It is not one of those virtues that gets too much encouragement these days. Even now, when the world needs mercy so badly... We hear Christians admonish one another for their kindness. As if , there can be too much kindness.